Suspect Is Hatless / Video Games

• Happens a few times in Ace Attorney, although there's most always an actual reason for it. One such time is in the third case of Investigations, where a witness can't recall any details apart from "they were two men". This was because she was sitting way too far away to be able to tell even the fact that the "two men" were wearing mascot costumes. In fact, it so happens she had even guessed at the two people being men (which turns out to be incorrect, as one of them was a woman), so in the end all her testimony boiled down to was that they were "two people". For the most part, descriptions of witnesses tend to fall onto one point, justified by the fact that these points are very unusual and eye-catching. For example, one case involves a witness claiming that the killer wore a "Nickel Samurai" outfit. A lot of testimonies also tend to have the witness' identification simply be some variation of: "That person was the defendant who's sitting over there."
  • In the first case of The Great Ace Attorney, Ryunosuke remembers one of the people present as "a young woman." When said young woman appears in court, she's wearing a fancy dress and a big hat with a swan on it, and confirms that she was wearing the same at the crime scene. Kazuma is baffled that he apparently didn't notice the swan hat.
• In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, you can at one point see a Belltower goon talking to a civilian in the street, describing the person they're looking for as "a heavily augmented white male, wearing a long coat and dark glasses". Not a very helpful set of clues in a world that faithfully employs many of the Cyberpunk Tropes.
• Fallout:
  • There's a non-criminal variant in Fallout 3, in which the best description the Lone Wanderer can come up with for his/her own father is "middle-aged." Also, when the player has a bounty placed on them, it gives only their name, sex and race.
  • Subverted in Fallout 4 when you're describing the man who kidnapped your child and murdered your spouse to Nick Valentine. The only worthwhile descriptions you're able to give him is that he's a bald guy with a scar, which while seemingly a somewhat common description automatically leads him to realizing that you're talking about Conrad Kellogg. It's mostly justified since Kellogg is in-universe a fairly notorious mercenary whose M.O. largely fits the story your character tells Nick and has lived in Diamond City until recently, meaning Nick would be familiar with him.
• In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, during Chapter 5, Felix's father Rodrigue comes to the monastery in order to retrieve the Lance of Ruin for his friend Margrave Gautier. If Felix is part of the player's house, he will ask if you've seen a man who resembles him, who's "middle-aged and relatively tall." You can say yes or no, and if you say yes, Felix will ask you to tell his father that he's out, since he doesn't want to see Rodrigue.
• We know next to nothing about the child murderer from Five Nights at Freddy's. All we know is that he's male. The second game gives us some possible hints…but they still might not tell us the whole story. For one, he's somewhat taller than Freddy is. Second, he drives a purple car. Third, he has a badge. And finally, he seems to be holding a phone-like object.
• God of War (PS4): At one point, the Stranger describes Kratos and Atreus to Mimir as "tattooed man, travelling with a child", which would be a decent description... except that everyone in the Nine Realms has some sort of tattoos, including the Stranger himself. He also fails to mention some very obvious distinguishing features such as Kratos's unnaturally white skin.
• The Grand Theft Auto series in general has the police giving highly generic descriptions over the radio, likely to cut down on voice work. A stolen police car is a "police car", a sports car of any make is simply designated by "[color] sports car", the same likewise applies to any generalization of vehicle type, and a military attack chopper is bizarrely a "red helicopter" (this is due to it having red as its default color code, despite the military paint job; red paint chips even flake off if you hit something). Not that this stops any police officer from knowing it's you from this generic description. Later games subvert this by having the radio controller initially give vague descriptions of the player's vehicle, but start giving more specific ones as the chase goes on, including the car's make and model. These details can still be vague/incorrect in the case of add-on cars including Rockstar's own creations, double subverting this trope.
• Grand Theft Auto IV
  • Niko is hired by Playboy X to kill someone. Unfortunately his description is unhelpful, to say the least:
    Playboy X: Son ain't too diesel or nuthin', but he a regular lookin' dude, knowwhatimean? And he don't flash his guac too much, but you can see it in his eye, he a hustler.
    Niko: Eh?
    Playboy X: Homie ain't too brollic, but he ain't scrawny neither, and he beats down on him a little, you dig? I mean, he ain't too bummy, but he grimy, too.
    Niko: ...so he's the average one?
    Playboy X: Look, he brown skinned, B! Motherfucker be rockin' baggy clothes, all that, jewels - and he stay fresh with the clean sneakers, knowwhatimean? But sometimes a bandanna.
    Niko: Look, I need more than that to go on.
    • At this point X gives up and gives Niko a camera phone so he can go to the place the guy hangs out and send him pictures so he can point out who the target is.
  • Played with in the case of the U.L. Paper contact. When Niko asks him if he's afraid Niko will rat him out, one of the several reasons he says he is not is the fact that they are sitting in a building with at least a hundred people matching his description (paunchy, middle aged, glasses).
• The infamous torture mission in Grand Theft Auto V works on this. Michael is charged with shooting a target wanted by the FIB. Trevor is supposed to get a description of the target from a witness by torturing him. The witness gives only generic descriptors (has a beard, smokes a lot) while Michael is facing down a house party full of people who match the description. This results in either a very long torture session gathering enough "hatless" hints to narrow it down to one guy, or Michael getting fed up and shooting someone at random, depending on the player's choices.
• Heavy Rain has a meta example. After Ethan's son, Shaun, disappears, he reports to the police. There, they'll ask for a description of the boy, and it's up to the player to answer. If you're like most people, chances are you won't remember what exactly Shaun was wearing and will give the wrong answer.
• A recurring feature in the Hitman series is that Agent 47 is so incredibly generic nobody can really come up with a way to describe him. In Hitman: Blood Money, when you complete a level, the newspaper at the end will have a picture of 47 depending on how many witnesses saw him. If only one or two witnesses caught him, the picture will be completely off. (This is averted if you got Silent Assassin, in which case - since nobody saw him - the picture will instead be of the level's target.)
• Kingdom Hearts is prone to this; the writers seem strangely averse to having any character give out another's physical description, so when they absolutely have to, they keep it incredibly vague.
  • Kingdom Hearts II: In Hollow Bastion, Tifa Lockhart is looking for "a guy with spiky hair".
    Sora: [pulls at his own spikes]
    Tifa: Spikier.
  • Also in II, Cloud's description of Sephiroth is "Silver hair, carries a big sword," narrowing it down to two traits that are incredibly common in their home franchise.
  • Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days: Hercules scouts someone for Phil's hero training, and apparently never describes him beyond 'a kid with potential'. Thus, when Roxas shows up at Olympus Coliseum on reconnaissance and completely fails to keep hidden, Phil thinks he's the new rookie. Phil himself falls into this trope by never checking the description with Herc, and so puts Roxas through the wringer until the Games end with a Heartless gatecrash, Roxas wraps up his mission before Phil gets back, and Phil asks where Roxas went.
  • Several times in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, Ventus describes Terra as a tall guy with clothing somewhat similar to his own, which proves sufficient the one time he gives that description to someone who has seen Terra. When searching for Ventus, Aqua describes him to Scrooge McDuck as simply "a boy who's not from around here". Again, this is enough for Scrooge to point her in the right direction.
• Happens in L.A. Noire. One witness can only describe a suspected criminal as 'sorta average'.
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky - Second Chapter: While investigating the circumstances affecting a town's water supply, the team learns some information that a suspicious man wearing dark glasses was seen going around the area.
• Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII: Lightning is described over the Yusnaan PA as a woman who "has rose-coloured hair and is carrying an enormous weapon." This, in a game with enough 'women with rose coloured-hair' to be a serial killing's target group.
• In Mafia II, the police dispatch's description of the protagonist is laughably vague; usually something along the lines of "White male, dark hair, medium build." Although this never seems to prevent policemen from recognizing Vito on sight.
• Need for Speed - Hot Pursuit:
  • There is a race where everyone drives a red McLaren, but police will still say "suspect is driving a red McLaren" (which is admittedly accurate enough, given how few of those exist; just pull over any red McLaren you see!) Also, in other races if you go fast enough, they'll sometimes only get the colour of your vehicle.
  • Averted in the very first Hot Pursuit, where cops would give out more detail, for example, "Half-mile from Summit Tunnel".
  • Hot Pursuit 2010 provides us with this example:
    Police Dispatcher: Suspect is in the sand, heading toward the rocks!
  • In the original Hot Pursuit, as well as High Stakes, cops refer to any add-on car as a "Sports Car", regardless of whatever the car actually is. This is a reuse of the chatter used when the player drives the fictional El Nino.
  • Most Wanted (and Carbon, by extension, since it reuses a lot of scanner chatter) has varying levels of this when the dispatcher reports she doesn't have the make or model of your car. Sometimes it's reasonable but frustrating ("Hold on for the description, we're having a bit of trouble with our translator) sometimes it falls squarely into this trope ("Caller says it's a sports car." You can practically hear the dispatcher rolling her eyes).
• In Papers, Please, you can get some...odd physical descriptions of entrants on their documents. You can literally get a description that says nothing more than "no glasses". Said entrant will invariably be wearing glasses.
• The Extermibots from Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando are guilty of this. They have been deployed to Allgon City on Planet Damosel to deal with the Protopet threat... but they've been ordered to eliminate anything that is "small and fuzzy", which puts Ratchet on their kill list as well.
• RuneScape's "Player-Owned Ports" minigame has a minigame where the Black Marketeer is forced to help assassins locate their targets in a crowd. The assassins provide only one clue to start, which may be what color top/trousers their mark is wearing, the target's gender, or indeed whether or not they are wearing a hat (note: males with head kerchiefs are considered hatless). As you spot false targets, they will gradually give you further hints that help narrow it down.
• Sacred Odyssey: Rise of Ayden: The titular hero is seeking Dentoras, a sentient, ancient Wise Tree. He strikes a conversation with a sentient giant tree, oblivious that it's Dentoras he's speaking to - leading to Dentoras asking if he even sees any other talking trees.
  Ayden:Very sorry, sir. You are Dentoras?
  Dentoras: DO YOU SEE ANY OTHER TALKING TREES NEARBY?
• Shadows of Doubt: Being a procedurally-generated detective game, some of the cases can easily end up being this just from poor luck. As an example, you might be provided only the target's first initial, salary, and phone number with which to start searching for them. Particularly unhelpful cases will start you with nothing but a blood type and a building, and expect you to get a suspect out of that.
• Trying to describe spies in Team Fortress 2 to teammates can fall into this trope. Shouting the spy's disguise might work if he's in the heart of battle, but if he's just changed (which good players do often) or has the knife "Your Eternal Reward", it's likely he's someone completely different or invisible.
• Geralt from The Witcher often has to deal with peasants for information when tracking down a monster. Unfortunately the testimony mostly boils down to 'it was big and scary' or 'I didn't get a good look because I were runnin' the other way.' It's all Geralt can do not to Face Palm.
• The World Ends with You: One of the random mind-reads you can pick up is a cop on a stakeout.
  The suspect's a blonde with dark skin and gaudy makeup. But there's so many kids like that around here, I can't tel 'em apart!
• When trying to find a card thief in Yu-Gi-Oh! Nightmare Troubadour, the only useful thing witnesses say was that the suspect has blond hair—which leads Joey to deny the theft and mistakenly accuse Mai. The thief turns out to be Bandit Keith, whose hair is very short and tied back with an American flag bandanna.

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